1. Field of the Invention (Technical Field)
The present invention relates to an electrocrushing drill, particularly a portable drill that utilizes an electric spark, or plasma, within a substrate to fracture the substrate.
2. Description of Related Art
Note that where the following discussion refers to a number of publications by author(s) and year of publication, because of recent publication dates certain publications are not to be considered as prior art vis-a-vis the present invention. Discussion of such publications herein is given for more complete background and is not to be construed as an admission that such publications are prior art for patentability determination purposes.
Processes using pulsed power technology are known in the art for breaking mineral lumps. Typically, an electrical potential is impressed across the electrodes which contact the rock from a high voltage electrode to a ground electrode. At sufficiently high electric field, an arc or plasma is formed inside the rock from the high voltage electrode to the low voltage or ground electrode. The expansion of the hot gases created by the arc fractures the rock. When this streamer connects one electrode to the next, the current flows through the conduction path, or arc, inside the rock. The high temperature of the arc vaporizes the rock and any water or other fluids that might be touching, or are near, the arc. This vaporization process creates high-pressure gas in the arc zone, which expands. This expansion pressure fails the rock in tension, thus creating rock fragments.
It is advantageous in such processes to use an insulating liquid that has a high relative permittivity (dielectric constant) to shift the electric fields in to the rock in the region of the electrodes. Water is often used as the fluid for mineral disintegration process. The drilling fluid taught in U.S. patent Ser. No. 11/208,766 titled “High Permittivity Fluid” is also applicable to the mineral disintegration process.
Another technique for fracturing rock is the plasma-hydraulic (PH), or electrohydraulic (EH) techniques using pulsed power technology to create underwater plasma, which creates intense shock waves in water to crush rock and provide a drilling action. In practice, an electrical plasma is created in water by passing a pulse of electricity at high peak power through the water. The rapidly expanding plasma in the water creates a shock wave sufficiently powerful to crush the rock. In such a process, rock is fractured by repetitive application of the shock wave. U.S. Pat. No. 5,896,938, to the present inventor, discloses a portable electrohydraulic drill using the PH technique.
The rock fracturing efficiency of the electrocrushing process is much higher than either conventional mechanical drilling or electrohydraulic drilling. This is because both of those methods crush the rock in compression, where rock is the strongest, while the electrocrushing method fails the rock in tension, where it is relatively weak. There is thus a need for a portable drill bit utilizing the electrocrushing methods described herein to, for example, provide advantages in underground hard-rock mining, to provide the ability to quickly and easily produce holes in the ceiling of mines for the installation of roofbolts to inhibit fall of rock and thus protect the lives of miners, and to reduce cost for drilling blast holes.